Work mice

I just met with the grad students who had a project for me in December. I've felt like I should've been making faster progress these last two months, especially since it's my first project and I imagined everyone wondering what the hell I was doing. But I didn't have a deadline- it's thesis work and they're not done with data-collection. And technical progress reports weren't really what they were after, so I got to work without interruption for quite a while. So I'm chugging away, learning VB from scratch, and today was the first demo.

I half expected them to say, "that's OK, but when will it be finished?" But no, they are very happy with my rate of progress, and so far, the work I've done is what they need. Before the meeting I'd thought I was about 80% done, time-wise (about 90% feature-wise). I've revised that downward to about 70%/85%, though the next time I see them they may have more features to add. (Which is fine; my job's to make their research easier; and for some of the program mechanics and features, they won't know if it's right until after they've seen it.) But they didn't have any complaints about the rate of progress; nor of the product. Yay.

It's satisfying to demo a project and have everything work correctly. I only demoed what works, and it didn't spontaniously break, and that pleased me.

Instead, I hit a button and we watched excel build 11 sheets, each filled with charts, breaking down the measurements of mice running around in cages, how much food they ate, how much oxygen they used and a few other things.

Yes, they can add more trials. Yes, they can have more or fewer mice, and relabel their data. Bam, here's another 11 sheets of output. They liked this, since each run took Chris a few days to do by hand.

And now, it's time for me to go home for lunch with d., who is apparently awake before noon today (after something like 13 hours of sleep the night before).

Following Obsessions

There's a nice find in Google Sightseeing today. It seems that Vanity Fair published an article from a guy who was obsessed with finding the source of the pretty autumn picture which is included with Windows as a desktop background.



Over a year later, he's found it, with help from the photographer and a team of similarly obsessed people. It's pretty local to here: in Kilbride, near Milton, Ontario.

Hm, next time we go hiking along the Niagara Escarpment, I feel an urge to take a detour and check it out. :)

hair dryer & anthromorphism

Does anyone local have a spare hair-dryer to loan us for a few weeks? (d. won't need it after the chicken pox is gone.)

mtffm & the_infamous_j came by this evening, which was just about exactly what d. needed.
( But they left us with Hepatitis. )